Sometimes it is easy to forget what really poor market action feels like, but we were reminded in rather rude fashion today.

After a breakdown and a couple of poor bounce attempts last week, it looked like we might finally be stretched enough to the downside to attract some dip buyers. We even opened weak, so there wasn't any temptation for the bears to fade a gap-up open.

The buyers did manage a brief bounce attempt before lunch, but were never able to work us back up to the opening highs. After that it was downhill the rest of the day. Bids just disappeared and we dripped steadily lower and closed near the lows of the day. There simply wasn't any interest in trying to catch a low.

What makes this action particularly challenging is that the selling isn't intense enough to scare out weak holders and set up a sharp rebound. Instead we have sellers giving up out of disinterest and disgust. It is slow and steady selling and doesn't produce good washouts.

Prepare a buy list; although there is lots of hyperbole about how terrible this market is acting there is nothing all that unusual about it. It is just part of the cycle. The only surprise is that it didn't happen earlier.